The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya follows the high school life of Haruhi Suzumiya, a young and very active high school girl, and those who are caught up in her antics. While Haruhi is the central character to the plot, the story is told from the point of view of Kyon, one of Haruhi's classmates.

Kyon is an ordinary freshman high school student who has recently given up his fantasies of espers, time travelers, and aliens as he left middle school. When he chooses to speak to Haruhi, he unwittingly sets off a chain of events which drag him into surreal situations; he is drawn further into a world eerily like the fantasies he had just managed to outgrow, with Haruhi at its center.